At least Let me Pee

The competition amongst brands is so fierce these days, that the marketers and brand managers are doing anything to grab the eyeballs and when I say anything, I mean anything.

One of the most private places of a person called “Restroom” is today full of brands, In India this concept is slowly catching up in the metro cities in the form of multiplexes, where we see advertisements in the restrooms being put up.

Statistics say that on an average a man spends around 55 seconds in the Loo and a woman spends about 105 seconds in the loo. (http://bit.ly/fEH2Mp)

One of the early adopters I came across was PVR cinemas, they did not promoted any brand, and instead they were involved more into self branding, as they claimed that they save water when people go to the restroom.

How this thing works is extremely simple, while a person is in the restroom he has a time window for few seconds, brands place their promotional message a little above the sight of a person, so when he stands he automatically looks up and reads the message, thereby reaching to the ultimate objective of message being consumed.

Not only at the pissing place, but brands have also looked upon the mirror, when a person goes to wash his hands, some sort of stickers/flash advertising have been noticed.

With the mall culture catching up and the youngsters increasingly spending their time in Malls and multiplexes opens up a big opportunity for the brands to take that few second window to deliver their message across.

Catch them young

Marketers today are increasingly focus on the teens and the pre teen’s category (8-13) as they are most exciting and emerging target market which can be focused on, let’s take the example of a newspaper say Times of India which has a school program called the TIMES NIE (Newspaper in education) going on, the strategy was pretty clear the objective of such an initiative was to catch them young.

The idea was to make them used to one type of format, which will continue through their rest of life, a similar initiative was launched by the immediate competition HT with the name ‘HT PACE’

Similar examples can be quoted from other major products like Mcdonald’s, they started off their marketing by targeting the kids with their Happy meals which focused on the free toy

Also one of the insights which can be derived is they also play a major role in the decision making process when it comes to purchasing of high involvement products like cars, LCD’s that’s is when Hyundai tried to woo the kids by coming with new colors and competitions.

There are a lot of other examples through sectors like ICICI in association with cartoon network opened a child account, Surf excel promoted its event color your future, one of the best campaigns was of Bajaj Caliber, the ‘Hoodibaba’ campaign which really grabbed the eyeballs of teens

The pester powers which are vested in today’s kids are something which marketers really look forward to leverage upon.

So, to sum up the teens and the preteens market is so hot because –

· It is the fastest growing segment amongst all other age categories

· They serve as the future customers once tapped at an early age

· Marketers look up to the pester powers of the children as they have major influence in the decision making process

What the hell Viral Marketing is all about ?

Viral marketing has been one of the key areas which have managed to grab eyeballs of major advertisers, this new medium started getting harnessed initially by the BFSI sector and slowly we can see a lot of products being marketed through viral videos from FMCG to online portals and from gaming consoles to telecom operators.

How exactly a viral works, and what is the science behind developing a viral is a very interesting thought, not many of thought about it, but it starts with a very basic theory which is taught in every management school, yes you got it right, it’s the Maslow’s theory of need hierarchy, now the questions is how it is linked with social media and viral marketing, every individual comes on social media platforms to satisfy his third level need, that is social need.

In order to satisfy this need, the individual consistently posts some interesting status updates or links of interesting videos, or images, or facebook applications, this all is done so that people get to know about the person and his recent activities.

How viral fits here can be clearly seen, the story of the viral is a short animated video which has got a humorous format and in the end the message says that this particular product/ service is being promoted, now people who are trying to quench their social needs, post the viral video on their profile just to get a recognition in their minds that “I post some very good content” , and this chain goes on and people start sharing this content across profiles.

As the video gets more and more shared, it is liked and conversations generate around it, which gives a buzz for that product/service, and the brand achieves the initial awareness which it wanted to achieve.